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Words from the 1990s

Words from the 1990s

In
the light of events two decades on, stirrings in the European undergrowth in
the 1990s induce dark forebodings. The European Community was enlarging itself,
and showing distinctly federalist tendencies. Under the terms of the 1992 Maastricht
treaty, it transformed itself into the European Union
(the terminology came into force officially in 1993, but is first recorded in
1983), abbreviated to EU
(1990). Such developments were not to the liking of Eurosceptical (1990)
elements within the ruling Conservative party in Britain. They were encouraged in
their doom-laden predictions by Black Wednesday (1992), in
which Britain
was forced ignominiously to abandon its membership of the European Exchange
Rate Mechanism. Meanwhile, slews of new euro-
compounds hit the dictionaries, from the serious (such as euro note (1995), referring
to the new European currency) to the sarcastic (such as eurosausage
(1994)).

In
the general election of 1997, the British Conservative government suffered a
crushing defeat. Taking the Tories’ place, New Labour (1992): a
transformed Labour party which had abandoned its more extreme socialist
policies in favour of the third
way (a buzzword of the 1990s, though it had some limited currency
before). Under Blairism
(1994), welfare
to work (1981) and tough love
(1981) were the thing. Having taken the lesson of more than a decade of
internecine strife, the new government made sure its supporters stuck close to
the party line: to be off-message
(1992) was the greatest crime. Labour had learned well from the Clintonites (1992) in the US how to gain
and hold on to power.

The
get-rich-quick-and-flaunt-it society of the 80s had evaporated in the recession
of the early 90s. Essex
man (a working-class Conservative voter supposedly to be found in Essex; 1990) was no more (his place taken by Islington person
(a middle-class Labour voter; 1994)), and Essex girl (a
brash young woman supposedly to be found in Essex;
1991) was keeping a lower profile. It was forecast as the ‘caring decade’,
although Generation X
(the disaffected younger generation; coined in 1952, but brought to prominence
by Douglas Coupland’s Generation X: tales for an accelerated culture
(1991)) did not find it so, and neither probably did jobseekers (in existence as
a general term since the 1850s, but elevated to official status in the UK in
the 1990s).

Confidence
returned with the end of the recession, and Britain reinvented itself as Cool Britannia (a coinage
of the 1960s, but now applied specifically to trendy British art, pop, film,
and fashion; 1992), proprietor of Britpop (1986). For entertainment,
people had docusoaps
(1991) on TV, Aga
sagas (1992) in the bookshops, and red top (1995)
tabloids on the news-stands. At work, there was a good chance you would be hot desking (1991), and the
new institution of dress-down
Friday (1993) reached Britain from the US.

You
might be loved-up
(1991) on ecstasy, or simply a little squiffy after a few alcopops (1996) (but not at
the local gastropub
(1996), where the accent was more on food than drink). Hopefully the result
would not be an ASBO
(antisocial behaviour order; 1997). Bad fashion choice of the decade was the mullet (1994) hairstyle
(albeit not the inspiration for the metaphorical bad hair day
(1991)).

Cybernauts (1989) and Netties (1985) surfed the World Wide Web (1990) (or
the Web (1990) for short). To be in the swim you had to have your own website (1993) or homepage (1993)
or blog (1999), or
you could communicate via SMS
(short message service; 1991). It was the decade of all things cyber-: cybercrime
(1991), cybersex
(1991), cybershoppers
(1994), cyberwar
(1992), etc., etc. You would hope to avoid the spam (1994) and
the mail bombs
(1994), but the main fear in the cybercafé (1994) was the
dreaded millennium
bug (1995), which threatened to make the world’s computer systems crash
when the clocks chimed midnight on 31 December 1999. At least cyberpets (electronic toys
that need regular stimuli; 1995), such as the tamagotchi (1997), would
not be affected; they only succumbed if you neglected them.

Editor’s
note: the first citation represents only the earliest documented use yet found
by OED researchers; a word may have been in circulation somewhat earlier.

The opinions and other information contained in the OED blog posts and comments do
not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of Oxford University Press.

John Ayto

Lexicographer and author, with titles including Twentieth Century Words and The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang.